BEYOND IMPROVEMENTProfessor Graham Donaldson

LINE OF ARGUMENT

• The world is changing fast and expectations of schools are contested and incoherent but continuing to grow

• Need to establish and sustain an agreed strategic vision and sense of purpose founded on clear values

• Curriculum structure, pedagogy and assessment should reflect vision, values and purpose

• Curriculum change must be set in wider context of teacher and leadership capacity and accountability

• Top-down change has only a limited record of success - schools appear to be inherently sceptical about external ‘solutions’ and need

to own the quality of learning and teaching

• Revitalised strategy for career-long teacher education

• Good teachers need to work within an environment that recognises and engages their professionalism

• We need to establish and nurture national, local, and school learning communities

• Agility, relevance and quality best achieved through strategic exploration rather than faithful implementation

• Beyond improvement – pervasive reflection of vision, values and purpose

RED ARROWS

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY EXPLORERS

Fast-Changing World

Globalisation• Interdependence• Competition• Offshoring• Reshoring• Migration• Scarcity• Climate

Employment• Skill demand changing• Portability• Employability• Digital competence• Fluid job market• Lifelong learning

Society• Inequality increasing• Demography• Life expectancy• Single households• Civic participation• Family

Education• New and growing expectations• Instrumental pressure? Education is

for work?• Education for democratic participation /

citizenship?• Uncertainty and lifelong learning• New conceptions of knowledge?• Creativity, teamworking, problem-

solving?• Deprivation and educational

achievement?• Better learning or different learning?• Anywhere, anytime learning? Hand-

held connectivity?• Social networking• Internationalisation –

PISA/PIRLS/TIMMS

Resources • Scarcity• Efficiency• Accountability

Technological developments

Nature/pace/lag/digital divide

How the demand for skills is changing

Levy and Murnane The New Division of Labor 2005

Importance of

deeper conceptual understanding

connected and coherent knowledge

authentic knowledge in context

creativity and problem solving

learning in collaboration and to collaborate

ethics and values

personal agency

Move from what students should be learning towards what they should become? (Priestley and Biesta 2014)

21st Century

schooling?

• “..many of today’s schools have not caught up as they continue to operate as they did in the earlier decades of the 20th Century.

• “How can learning within and outside schools be reconfigured in environments that foster the deeper knowledge and skills so crucial in our new century?”

• “To succeed in this is not only important for a successful economy, but also for effective cultural and social participation and for citizens to live fulfilling lives.”

• ‘INNOVATING TO LEARN,LEARNING TO INNOVATE’ OECD 2008

OECD SAID

“…against the bright hopes and the brave words with which the major reforms were launched most interventions, local or national, have promised a good deal more than they have delivered…”

“After a couple of decades of being energetically reformed, most schools, especially the bottom-tier schools, and most school systems seem to be pretty much the same…”

Payne, Charles (2013) So Much Reform, So Little Change, Harvard Education Press

“We have in education a long history of innovation but it rarely touches but a chosen few.”

Hattie, Visible Learning (2009) p254

Record of top-down reform disappointing

How much do Teachers Matter?

Students of the most effective teachers have learning gains four times greater than the learning gains of the least effective teachers (Sanders and Rivers 1996).

Overall, the research results indicate that raising teacher quality is vital for improving student achievement, and is perhaps the policy direction most likely to lead to substantial gains in school performance.(OECD 2005)

Over 3 yrs, learning with a high performing teacher instead of a low performing teacher can make a 53 percentile difference (McKinsey 2007)

Teachers Matter

What do teachers that ‘matter’ look like?

If Wales was to achieve the school system that it needs and wants in the future, then it seemed clear to us that the teaching profession needs to provide a lead. Wales, needs a new form of professionalism amongst its teachers. It needs teachers who:

• have high expectations of and a commitment to the achievement of all pupils;

• take responsibility for innovation;

• relish change and help to lead it;

• are able to take a sharper focus on the needs of individual learners, including helping them in ‘learning how to learn’;

• accept and respond to demands for their accountability;

• take personal and collective responsibility for professional development;

• are able to evaluate and use different sorts of evidence relevant to the improvement of practice;

• are willing to work collaboratively with other teachers and other professionals both day to day and in the development of their practice;

• are willing and able to work in ways that draw on best practice from across the UK and internationally.

Furlong ‘Teaching Tomorrow’s Teachers’ 2015

Cuban and Tyack in Hattie ‘Visible Learning ’ 2009

BUT?Teachers and change

Leadership Matters

• “The importance of the headteacher’s leadership is one of the clearest messages emerging from research. There is no evidence of a school being effective with weak leadership”.

J Gray (1990), British Journal of Educational Studies

• Leadership second only to classroom instruction in affecting what students learn at school and that leadership effect largest in the most challenging schools

(Leithwood et al 2006)

• “Headteachers are perceived as the main source of leadership by key school staff. Their educational values and leadership practices shape the internal processes and pedagogic practice that result in improved pupil outcomes.”

(Day et al., The Impact of School Leadership on Pupil Outcomes, University of Nottingham, 2009)

• “A culture of initiative and collegiality within which learning is always the prime focus embodies the kind of distributive leadership which is the hallmark of our most dynamic and effective schools”

(Donaldson, Teaching Scotland’s Future, 2010)

Leadership Matters

0.27

0.84

0.42

0.31

0.42

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

5. Ensuring an Orderly andSupportive Environment

4. Promoting and Participating inTeacher Learning and

Development

3. Planning, Coordinating andEvaluating Teaching and the

Curriculum

2. Resourcing Strategically

1. Establishing Goals andExpectations

Effect Size

Robinson, V., Hohepa, M. and Lloyd, C. (2009), School Leadership and Student Outcomes: Identifying What Works and Why: Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration, Wellington: New Zealand Ministry of Education.

RelativRelative impact of leadership activitiese impact of leadership activities

OECD RECOMMENDATIONS FOR WALESOECD WOECD ELSH RECOMMENDATIONS

• Need for powerful and consistent vision – understood and owned by the

profession

• Build professional capital - the capacity and confidence of the teaching

profession – individually and collectively

• Strengthen pedagogical leadership

• Be clear about the role of evaluation and assessment – focus on improvement

“What our children and young people learn during their time at school has never been more important yet, at the same time, the task of determining what that learning should be has never been more challenging.”

Donaldson Successful Futures 2015

The challenge

The report: Successful Futures8 Chapters

OverviewProcesses and EvidencePurposesStructure Pedagogy Assessment ImplicationsConclusions and Recommendations

68 Recommendations

Six Big Messages

Mobilise around clear and compelling overall vision – be clear

about and maintain focus on what matters – structures should

follow not lead

Focus on progression - clear lines of sight - minimise transitions

- balance consolidation and pace – praise effort

Don’t make the complex complicated – avoid overload

Assessment and evaluation are for learning – culture of respect

for evidence

Collaboration as collective learning and problem solving

Alignment around teaching and learning

Subsidiarity

Innovation and Quality EXPLORATION or IMPLEMENTATION?

‘Too many of the developers take the McDonald’s approach: the significant thinking and planning are done at corporate headquarters and the franchise holders are expected to adhere to corporate policies and regulations…Developers have both idealized and simplistic notions of educational leadership’

FAITHFUL IMPLEMENTATION

‘Why should any effort at innovation be expected to be other than a first approximation of what needs to be done?...The educational reform movement has been almost totally unaware that its initial models are…just that: first approximations...that would lead to better ones’Sarason (1996) Revisiting the culture of the school and the problem of change’

STRATEGIC EXPLORATION

Not imprisoned by the past or the context

Shared vision/purposes focused on progression in young people’s learning

Active and extended collaborative and individual culture of learning

Professional inquiry and exploration

Engages with complexity

Clear professional standards

Leadership not about formal role or length of service

Relentless focus on impact on young people’s learning and wellbeing

Accountability mechanisms are evidence-based and constructive

Outward-looking and seeks challenge

Aspiration, reflection and optimism

A revitalised learning community

Better experiences and outcomes for our young people

A revitalised teaching community

A Learning Culture

RED ARROWS

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY EXPLORERS

TABLE DISCUSSIONPutting the learner first- the four purposes